Interested to start a salt water with 2 ft

[BFG]

Elmike, it depends on how you approach your setup and what you may want to keep in your saltwater tank. Like a planted tank, weekly water change is meant to replace some parameter that has been consumed by the livestock in the tank. Water change will also assist in the removal of undesirable element from the tank itself. But this is not the only way of replacing and removing certain stuff into or out of the saltwater tank. There are many alternative to get to the same destination. Stuff like refugium, benthic zone and remote deep sand bed are amongst some other method to control certain parameter in your tank and there may be other method available that I did not mention.

In my personal honest opinion, to have a setup that require a small time for the tank owner to fiddle with his setup is to have a setup that uses branded equipment in the 1st place. With branded equipment, you are assured that whatever equipment you have, it is built to perform. In the event that something bad happened ( nothing good ever happen fast in a marine setup, only bad things ), you could eliminate the equipment as a potential cause, provided you know how to use such equipment in the 1st place and knows the ins and out of the equipment to trouble shoot it. But the main problem for such a setup is which branded brand to get into for your tank? You have to take into consideration that no 2 tank will be ever be alike in a marine setup so you have to choose wisely. On a personal note, most of my tank equipments are from Germany and the only 'Asian' equipment I have is the Mitsubishi Starmex compressor chiller. Believe me when I've tried to have a cheap setup, I've failed miserably due to an equipment failure which wipe out all my coral. After this episode, I now invest in high quality equipment and slowly stock my tank with corals.

My advise to newbie should they want to be in the " Dark Side" of the hobby, is to read up on other people setup both local and foreign forum. Keep looking and reading up until you are sure that you have the basic knowledge in your head. You must know the basic of the specific gravity, ph of seawater, calcium level, magnesium level, alkalinity level, optimum temperature for your tank setup and what not. Look into their setup and the equipment they use. Try to think ahead before you implement the equipment into your setup. Would the equipment work in your setup or will it be a hindrance in the future. You might spend a tonne of money until you've find the right equipment so think ahead.

Wow, 3 paragraph and I only cover a small aspect of saltwater upkeeping! I'll stop for now.....

[Fuzzy]

25% weekly water change is excessive. But there is no way its healthy to keep a tank running for more than 2 - 3 months with zero water changes, regardless of how "high-tech" your
equipment setup is. Even in public aquariums they do water changes with Natural Sea Water.

But if you are not running with a skimmer its probably necessary to do weekly 25% water changes to maintain water quality.

In my 28G Nano (well more like 30G after including the FR and external loop) I change the about 30% - 40% of the water monthly, or split into 20% fortnightly changes.

So far, everything looks to be stable but this system has only been running for around 3 months. Livestock has only been in there for 2 months.

The most economical way to start is with a nano FOWLR (Fish Only With Live Rock) tank.

If you start with a JBJ 24G Nano or one of the Boyu ones, it shouldn't be too costly or intimidating to start with fish only.